Rates and who gets charged what

A rate decides what one tracked hour is worth. Rates can be set in several places, which raises the obvious question of what happens when more than one is filled in.

The answer is that Temponia never combines them. Exactly one rate applies to any entry, and the project decides which one. Everything else is ignored, including rates that are filled in and look like they should count.

Where rates can be set

• Billable rate on a person, under Manage, then Users. Described in the form as "the rate that you bill to your clients. This can be overwritten on each project."
• Rate on a task, under Manage, then Tasks. Only shown when the task is Billable.
• Rate / hour on the project itself.
• Rate / hour per person, in the Users assigned panel of a project.
• Rate / hour per task, in the Project's tasks panel of a project.

There is no rate on a client. Rates that differ per client are expressed by setting them on that client's projects.

The order that decides the rate

1. Is the task billable? The Billable checkbox on the task, under Manage, then Tasks. If it is off, the entry is worth zero no matter what any rate anywhere says. Nothing below is even consulted.
2. What is the project's Billable setting? This is the field that picks the single source of the rate. It has four values: Not billable, By project rate, By task rate, By person rate. Not billable means the entry is worth zero.
3. By project rate uses the project's own Rate / hour. The task's rate and the person's rate are not looked at.
4. By task rate uses the row for that task in Project's tasks. With DR ticked it takes the task's own rate from Manage, then Tasks. With DR cleared it takes the Rate / hour typed on that row, which applies to this project only.
5. By person rate uses the row for that person in Users assigned. With DR ticked it takes that person's Billable rate from their user record. With DR cleared it takes the Rate / hour typed on that row, again for this project only.

DR is short for default rate, and the app describes it as "use the globally defined default hour rate assigned to this user" and "use the globally default rate specified for this task".

The consequence is worth stating plainly. On a project set to By task rate, a senior and a junior doing the same task are worth the same. On a project set to By person rate, one person is worth the same whatever task they work on. There is no mode that multiplies a person rate by a task rate, and no way to make one task on one project charge one person differently from another.

Rates are stored on the entry

The rate is resolved and written onto the time entry when that entry is saved. Changing a rate afterwards does not restate time that is already recorded. That is deliberate: raising your rates in March should not silently rewrite what January was worth.

An entry picks up the current rate whenever it is saved again, so correcting a badly priced entry means opening and saving it, not only fixing the rate.

A zero rate never reaches an invoice. When you invoice time on a time and materials project, only entries with a rate above zero become invoice lines. Time worth nothing is still recorded and still reported, but it produces no line. See creating an invoice.

New assignments and new task links

When you assign someone to a project, their current Billable rate is copied into that project row as the starting value for the override. Adding a task to a project does the same with the task's rate.

That copy happens once, at the moment of assignment. From then on, changes to the person's or the task's global rate reach the project only while DR is ticked, because that is what makes Temponia read the global rate instead of the project row.

Rates on fixed fee and retainer projects

Rates still resolve on those projects, but they are not what the client pays. The project form says so: "These rates are not billed to the client, the fee covers the work. They are only used in reports to value the tracked time."

Fill them in if you want to compare the agreed fee against the value of the hours spent. See Billing types.

Cost is a separate number

Labor rate on a user is not a billing rate. The form calls it "the internal cost that this user incurs on your business", notes that only administrators can see it, and that it is used for cost reporting. It has its own history, editable through Manage cost history, so a raise does not rewrite the cost of past work.

Labor rate never affects what a client is charged. It is what turns revenue into margin in the project dashboard and the cost columns of the project report.